New Steam UI launched

Valve's new Steam UI boasts a streamlined aesthetic and more information when downloading.

Valve has finally rolled out the complete and final version of the new Steam user interface, which has been in open beta since February this year.

The new look and feature-set will be automatically applied when you next start Steam up, though if you're having problems with that then you can force an update by downloading the new version of Steam direct from Valve.

The new interface is mainly built around a aesthetic changes to the Store and Games Library that make it easier to peruse your available games and likely purchases, but there are plenty of new features bundled into the update too.

Among the more useful features is a new downloader which offers more info on your download speeds and apparently stops game updates from pausing so regularly. The new games library is also customisable and Steam users are now able to sort their owned titles into lists.

Social features have updated too, with your latest achievements and game progress now listed right in your library. There's new news feeds to, including a feed for each game listed on Steam. The Steam Alt-Tab overlay has been improved too, now running smoother than ever.

Best of all, Steam has eschewed it's reliance on Internet Explorer and opted to use a WebKit based rendering engine for the client and in-game overlay.

You can read a full list of the new features on Valve's UI site - and don't forget that the update coincides with a sale on all Rockstar Games available on Steam too.

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58 Comments

I personally find it horrible. The default black one was hundred times better. Not only that, but they DON'T give you an option to change back to the old one... Ashame, I loved that UI.
Ah. The new browser doesn't seem to like google reader either, because the "popups" (when you want to read the whole story) just doesn't work in there.

I don't see what all the fuss is about. I love the new UI. I think it's a very natural progression from the old one and brings steam right up to date. It makes several much needed changes to key functions as well as introducing some new features which were not necessarily needed but that I certainly welcome and enjoy using. Apart from all the functional changes that have been made, it looks much better in Windows 7 and will look good on OSX when that gets off the ground. The old steam was an application designed to run on an old OS, the new steam is designed to run on newer OS'. Like I said, a natural progression.

yes steam only installs stuff under the Steam\SteamApps folder which is a bit stupid. It could have had an option for selecting where you want a game downloaded. But I guess they want to keep it simple and avoid support nightmares with customers wondering where their games went and other complexities.
You can fix it yourself if you get to know symlinks which are available on Windows 7.

I've just been having a tinker with it on the netbook and it looks rather nice, not too cluttered on the small screen. This, of course, means that I'll probably hate it on the desktop when I get home as it's too small! :P

The option to change the jumplist for Win 7 is nice although I expect I'll just switch everything on and leave it at that.

All the hating is nothing new to any new UI. When company wants to change their UI, they just have to do it and ignore the haters and eventually people will get used to it and like it better. (facebookl

Originally Posted by zimbloggyAll the hating is nothing new to any new UI. When company wants to change their UI, they just have to do it and ignore the haters and eventually people will get used to it and like it better. (facebookl

No, it's because people know that nothing will be done so they don't say anything any more.

Originally Posted by zimbloggyAll the hating is nothing new to any new UI. When company wants to change their UI, they just have to do it and ignore the haters and eventually people will get used to it and like it better. (facebookl

No, it's because people know that nothing will be done so they don't say anything any more.

I disagree. I think that people are initially resistant to any change in UI, mainly because they aren't used to it. Eventually, people will like it better, and get angry all over again when they update the UI again down the road. Same thing happens every single time they update facebook.

I don't like how slow it is..This really is the only issue I have with it. I know I will get use to the rest but the slowness of it is annoying as hell. I refuse to wait one tenth of a second every time I open it. The fade in/out is just bad

there's no way the people who work on games work on Steam. It's just two different worlds.

As for EP3, it's going to come before another CS, that's for sure, which means you will have to wait another long ass time before you get a new CS haha. Oh and don't expect the new (if ever there is one) CS to be similar to 1.6 and CSS... They can't afford to release such a bland game. They will most likely try to do something bigger, meaner à la CoD6/BC2

Ah well... Now the time has come for me as well. For some reason I'd been able to evade the "upgrade" until now, but no longer.

I see that the mini games list isn't quite as broken as it was when I tried the beta (reasonably late in the development stage, I might add).

The Friends list is still as horribly broken as it was in the beta, however. I'm seriously wondering how it made it through the QA process. If you want to see what I mean, just uncheck "Show Avatars". There's no distinction between the user name and the game played, making it pretty hard to read. I wanted to report this, but alas, my account on Steampowered.com, which I've had for years had been conveniently deleted or is otherwise MiA.

When my Steam updated by itself, I got "Fatal Error: Program failed to load modules"!! Great update!! There are solutions on steam forums as it seems it is a corrupt file problem, but its not a good start to the update; not even being able to start steam!

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